Amit Segal, political correspondent on Channel 2, is a link in the chain of the establishment of control by settlers and their supporters over the government and media in Israel. Despite his young age he already enjoys the status of political expert and is invited to panels that try to analyze political processes of parties and their leaders, and sometimes even to guess the future. His speech is rapid and brimming with self-confidence verging on arrogance. There is no doubt that he is a true product of the settler education system, following in the ideological footsteps of the founding generation. If the process of establishing hegemony by the settlers and their supporters is not halted, he appears to have a brilliant future ahead of him.

And now this industrious man has bombarded us with information about the shady past of the young Likud Knesset Member Oren Hazan. If the information is true, then number 30 on the Likud Knesset list has changed from being a media curiosity to nearly a criminal figure, immersed in the criminal world of gambling, drugs and prostitution, which has charms for more than a few Israelis. As one of the veterans of the Likud Central put it: “It’s all jealousy; who would not want to manage a casino and be surrounded by beautiful women?”

Segal and Hazan are close in age, the second generation of the settlers. They both grew up in the Occupied Territories outside the State of Israel, in an area saturated with violence, murder, theft and robbery. What amount of bad blood between the two of them could have brought Segal to take part in an investigation that blackens Hazan’s name to the point of possibly cutting off a budding career in public life? Hazan claims that the investigation is all falsehoods and lies, that nothing of the kind ever happened and that he is a victim of media terrorism. He announced that he would file a lawsuit for slander. I await the trial with baited breath. It looks like behind this story is an affair that awaits the attention of a young and energetic investigative journalist.

Contamination of the language

Nearly 200 years ago the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine wrote prophetically that those who burn books will end up burning people.

To that statement could be added the iron rule of universal application according to which every regime or government that is guilty of human rights violations, oppression, racism and aggressive war is always accompanied by contamination of the language. That is, mendacious and manipulative use of language, whether it takes the form of the invention of new words intended to show negative phenomena in a positive light, or the malicious use of terms and language patterns with positive connotations for shady purposes, in the hope of mobilizing widespread approval in the public. Slavery and discrimination against Blacks in the USA would not have lasted so many years if not for the American judge who ruled that the rights that are promised to all people in the US Constitution do not include the Blacks because they are not human beings, thereby resolving the dilemma of those who felt uncomfortable with slavery. Nazi Germany could not have murdered millions of human beings, including a at least a million children, using industrial methods, if not for a prior protracted and efficient campaign of propaganda that represented the Jew as Satan and a cancer in the body of the nation that was plotting to take control over the world that needed to be destroyed before he could do that. The message was received and the plan to destroy them received broad acceptance. These principles are also valid in all matters related to the Israeli Occupation.

And this reminds me of a correspondence I had with the writer Amos Oz in the first half of 1986.

Amos asked for my consent to publish a correspondence between us as an article in the late lamented daily Davar. I agreed, on the condition that the correspondence be published in its entirety. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Amos Oz published an article about the correspondence in which he “summarized” my positions in way that did not represent them fairly. Oz’ article was also published in his book The Slopes of Lebanon. [1] The correspondence was published in full in the first issue of Gesher, a Palestinian weekly in the Hebrew language founded and edited by my friend Attorney Ziyad Abu-Ziyad, a proponent of peace and coexistence. The passage quoted below did not appear in Amos Oz’ summary. I wrote the following in my letter to Oz:

`An inextricable part of the corruption I spoke of above is the new language that was created in Israel after the Occupation began. One could call it Colonial Hebrew. Its creators tried to bypass all the ugliness and injustice that accompany the Occupation by using terms that convert the twisted to straight and the ugly to beautiful. Accordingly, official Hebrew does not recognize the term “Occupied Territories” but the pastoral and Biblical term “Judea and Samaria”, which instructs that these are ancient territories that were promised to us and have belonged to us since that Divine promise. Just as there are no occupied territories, neither is there an occupation army, and the Israeli army even when it is an occupier continues to be the Israel Defence Force. And if the Israeli army is not an occupier, then naturally it cannot carry out oppression of a civilian population and the denial of human freedoms, but rather concerns itself only with enforcing the law and protecting public order. Clean and pleasant language. And if there is no occupation in the first place, then there cannot be any resistance to the Occupation, and you, Amos Oz, have fallen into this trap. Along with the language that bypasses the ugly, a language that is intended to instill contempt for and hatred of the occupied population has been created. Thus the Israeli language of the military government will always use the term “locals” and never mention the term “Palestinian people”. These “locals” never protest or demonstrate, they are always either an inflamed mob or rioters. And when a soldier shoots at those rioters and kills a five year old child or a young woman, it is almost always followed by a laconic announcement from the IDF spokesman that says that “in the investigation conducted by the military authorities it emerged that the soldier did not contravene the army’s orders on opening fire”. Simple, sharp and smooth. Very few Israeli citizens ask themselves how it happens that the standing orders on opening fire permit the shooting of women and children with impunity. As I said, in the absence of an occupation and resistance to occupation it is inconceivable that the occupied population might have combatants of its own. They are always either terrorists or saboteurs or murderers. And a people that is not occupied cannot have a national liberation movement, but murder and sabotage organizations at most. I could give more and more examples of the colonial language of the Occupation that has taken root in Israel. For example: the Palestinians have no intellectuals, but “notables”, and at most “educated people”, and so on and so forth.

`What I am trying to do is to restore to concepts their true meaning. If my people rules over another people, we need to call the child by his name, and the name of the child is occupation and oppression. And if my people blows up the homes of people who have committed no crime, we need to call the child by his name: criminal collective punishment. And if my people bombs civilian populations in Beirut, Tyre and Sidon and kills thousands of civilians including women and children, we need to call the child by his name, and the name of the child is war crime; and whoever gave the order is a war criminal. And if my people denies another people basic civil rights, we need to call the child by his name: oppression and denial of human liberty. The fact that it is my people that is committing all these injustices does not make them pleasant. Those who try to sanitize their own people’s filth by laundering their crimes and sins enter into the category of the scoundrels who find their last refuge in patriotism.

`I am trying to apply to the Middle East conflict those same basic standards that guide me in my approach to other conflicts in the world. Just as I do not accept terminologies employed by colonial regimes in other places in the world, I do not accept them in Israel either. Just as I do not accept the terminology created by the Apartheid regime in South Africa, neither do I accept similar terminology created by the Israeli regime of apartheid in the Occupied Territories. It cannot be disputed that a reality of apartheid according to which there is one law, a discriminatory and oppressive one for the Palestinians, and another law that confers privileges on the occupying settlers, has been created in the Occupied Territories.

`And even in cases when the Palestinian resistance commits acts of the type I strongly oppose – and in such cases I do not conceal my opinion from my Palestinian interlocutors – I never forget that the source is the Occupation above all. That is the mire that must be removed, that is the swamp that must be drained. That is where my primary duty lies.` (From letter to Amos Oz, 8 June 1986)

Those words are still relevant today, 30 years later. What has changed is that the lexicon of polluted language has grown. Just this week two words that have undergone ministerial contamination were added: ” delegitimatzia” from the lips of Culture Minister Miri Regev (Who also serves as Chair of the Israel-North Korea Friendship Association),* and ”ha’anasha”(“humanization”) from the lips of Education Minister Naftali Bennett (who also serves as Chairman of the Committee to Rehabilitate Benito Mussolini).* Regev announced that she will have no part in the delegitimization of Israel and attacking soldiers of the IDF. The matter of delegitimization of Israel is an invention of the Right, which has succeeded in making fools of Israelis and their allies in order to enlist a maximum of Israeli citizens into the struggle against an “existential danger”. There is no lie greater than this. The Israeli leadership is doing this in order to blur the distinction between Israel and the Occupied Territories. Israel is recognized by 180 states and nobody questions its existence. What is going on here, then? There is in fact delegitimization of the Occupation, and rightly so. The lady of culture refuses to hear this and does not want us to say it. Of course there will be some people of weak character who will fold, but the vast majority of human-rights defenders will continue to make their protests heard. If the Minister wants IDF soldiers not to be harmed, I have a wonder cure for her that has proven itself all over the world: take them out of the Occupied Territories.

The queen

On Thursday, 11 June 2015, between 8 and 9 in the morning, the radio station Galei Tzahal hosted Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the extreme right-wing party Jewish Home. That home is a very unfriendly one to non-Jews and to Jews like me. To me it is a home for religious fanatics whom the description as “Jewish Jihadis” fits well. Interviewing him in the studio was the broadcaster Dr. Ilana Dayan. Bennett explained why he disqualified for State funding the show “A Parallel Time” that was performed at the Arab theatre in Haifa, Al Midan, saying that it was not fit to be seen by school children. The inspiration for the play was the letters of Walid Daqqa, who according to the official report was a “Palestinian terrorist who was convicted of murdering the soldier Moshe Tamam and sentenced to life imprisonment.” The show “humanizes the despicable murderer”, claims the minister, who asks: is it conceivable that we humanize the terrorist? Ilana then said, “Thank you, Minister” and that was the end of the interview. I felt that this was a missed opportunity. I forgot for a moment that I was not in the studio and I turned towards the radio and asked: Ilana, why did you not tell him that that is exactly what we need – to humanize the enemy? Every peace process between two warring sides involves the humanization of those you wanted to kill yesterday. I recovered quickly, remembering that I was not in the studio and Ilana could not hear me.

And there is also the question of the historian: is it correct to represent Daqqa as an ordinary criminal murderer, or is he a Palestinian version of the Olei Hagardom, [2] some of whom attacked civilian targets, and after whom streets and museums are named? The Tamam family paid the terrible price. Our duty is to prevent the next war.

Despite the disappointments and the disagreements, Ilana Dayan is a journalist of rare quality. She is wise, educated, sharp and an excellent interviewer. She does not shrink before people in authority, is assertive as necessary and empathetic at the right times. Her Hebrew is rich – a delight for lovers of the language. Her voice is radiophonic, her speech is flowing and her pronunciation is clear – when all that is concentrated in one woman it is already a gift from God (for those who believe).

Every Thursday at 8 in the morning I turn on the radio, the needle is already on Galei Tzahal, and for an hour I alternate between pleasure and anger. I imagine what I would say to Ilana if I were participating in the show, but I know that there is little chance of that happening, for the educator Bennett is standing on guard, saying that it is inconceivable for this traitor who supports Vanunu to be invited to speak on the military radio station.

More than once I have been asked if I know Ilana Dayan’s position on the Left-Right continuum. She takes care not to be identified. Protracted listening to her broadcasts has led me to the conclusion that she belongs to the democratic Right, in the area of the former Justice Minister Dan Meridor. Is there any such animal? There most certainly is, and it is an important line of defence in preventing Israel from becoming a branch of the state of the settlers. Unfortunately, however, that animal is also in danger of extinction.

2. Literally, “those who ascend the gallows”: Jewish underground fighters of the Irgun and Lehi organizations who were sentenced to death in Palestine during the British Mandate for attacks on Arabs and Britons.